University of California • Berkeley
University of California Bancroft Library/Berkeley
Regional Oral History Office
David Magee
BOOKSELLING AND CREATING BOOKS
An Interview Conducted by
Ruth Teiser
Berkeley
1969
1 1 ill II
David Magee - 1969
Photo by Ruth Teiser
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a
legal agreement between the Regents of the University
of California and David Magee, dated September 10,
1969. The manuscript is thereby made available for
research purposes. All literary rights in the
manuscript, including the right to publish, are
reserved to the Bancroft Library of the University of
California at Berkeley. No part of the manuscript
may be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of
the University of California at Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office,
486 Library, and should include identification of the
specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the
passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with David Magee requires that he be notified
of the request and allowed thirty days in which to
respond.
Books and Printing in the San Francisco Bay Area
Interviews Completed by December, 1969
Lewis and Dorothy Allen, Book Printing with The Handpress
Brother Antoninus, Brother Antoninus: Poet, Printer, and
Religious
Mallette Dean, Artist and Printer
Edwin Grabhorn, Recollections of the Grabhorn Press
Jane Grabhorn, The Colt Press
Robert Grabhorn, Fine Printing and the Grabhorn Press
James D. Hart, Fine Printers of the San Franoisoo Bay Area
Warren R. Ho well, Two San Franoisoo Bookmen
Haywood Hunt, Recollections of San Franoisoo Printers
Lawton Kennedy, A Life In Printing
Oscar Lewis, Literary San Francis oo
David Magee, Bookselling and Creating Books
Walter Mann, Photoengraving
Bernhard Schmidt, Herman Dledriohs, Max Schmidt, Jr., The
Schmidt Lithograph Compaay* Vol. I
Lorenz Schmidt, Ernest Wuthman, Steward Norris, The Schmidt
Lithograph Company, Vol. II
Albert Sperisen, San Francisco Printers . 1925-1965
Jack W. Stauffaoher, A Printed Word Has It's Own Measure
Edward DeWitt Taylor, supplement to interview with Francis
Farquhar
Adrian Wilson, Printing and Book Designing
INTRODUCTION
David Bickersteth Magee was born in Yorkshire in
1905, the son of a vicar, John Arthur Victor Magee, and
Gwendolyn Georgina Frances Mary Wilson Magee. David
Magee grew up in London and, after his graduation from
public school and following his father's death, came to
America when he was nineteen.
As he recounts in this interview, he had been a book
collector since the age of eight and had begun his
editorial career at nine. In San Francisco he secured a
position in the book shop of John Howell and almost
immediately prepared a catalogue, thus laying the foundation
for much of his future work as an antiquarian bookman,
cataloguer, bibliographer, publisher, editor and author.
In 1928 he opened the first of his book shops, at 480
Post Street, San Francisco, moving to 4?0 Post in 1936 and
442 Post in 1948. In 1964 he moved once more, to 3108 B
Fillmore Street.
Over the years Mr. Magee has travelled frequently
to Europe to buy books, created collections that have
enriched the shelves of both private collectors and
libraries, and taken a central part in many aspects of the
world of books in San Francisco. As publisher and.
bibliographer he has had a close association with the
Grabhorn Press, which he discusses here. He has also
been associated with most of the other notable printers
of the San Francisco Bay Area, through individual
publications, and through publications of the Book Club
of California and the Roxburghe Club. The catalogues he
has created as a bookseller have been notable. He has
also made notable editorial contributions to books and
journals concerned with books. In addition, he has
written nationally published fiction and essays on
matters beyond the immediate world of books.
In 1931 Mr. Magee married Dorothy Wilder, who has
collaborated with him in some of his bibliographic work
and has worked with him in the Fillmore Street enterprise
known simply as "David Magee/Antiquarian Books."
Mr. Magee is a man of humor and good humor, as is
evident in this interview. It was held in two sessions
on April 8 and. April 9, 1969, in the comfortable high-
ceilinged, book-lined main room of the shop. The text
was edited carefully, Mr. Magee making some additions and
clarifying some wordings. At the request of the interviewer,
he added information on his experience in printing and on
ii
his non-bibliographic writings, but no rearrangement of
material or other major changes were made.
Ruth Teiser
Interviewer
10 November 19 69
Regional Oral History Office
Room ^86 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California
iii
CONTENTS
Interview, April 8, 1969
Background of a Bibliophile 1
First Publications 7
The First Grabhorn Bibliography 10
Albert Bender 1«
The Second Grabhorn Bibliography and
Other Publications
Bookselling and Book Buying 2^4-
The Grabhorn Press 29
Interview, April 9, 1969 *H
The Fine Printing Tradition in San Francisco ^3
The Post-Grabhorn Printers 53
The Economics of Fine Printing 63
Writing and Editing 6?
Interview, April 8, 1969
Background of a Bibliophile
Teiser: Shall we begin with the day of your birth?
Magee: Well, I was born June the 18th, 1905 » in the village
of Gargrave, which is in the West Riding of
Yorkshire, very close to the border of Lancashire.
My father was the vicar of the church, and my mother
was one of the daughters of the squire. And I was
the fifth child. My mother's family had been living
in Yorkshire in the same house from the seventeenth
century. They were a lot of three-bottle squires
and their unpretentious ladies, you know, with one
exception, which is interesting from my point of
view, I think. My great -great-aunt was Mary Prances
Richardson Currer, who was England's greatest woman
book collector. In fact, she had such a marvelous
library that Heber*, who was the greatest man
collector of his time, tried to marry her in order
to get one single book that he wanted. [Laughter]
So maybe there's something in heredity, because
*Richard Heber (1773-1833).
Magee: I believe it was from her that I got my love of old
books. Also my first cousin, who bears exactly the
same relationship to her as I do, is chairman of
Sotheby's, Peter Wilson. But it was a marvelous
library. She had every Bible in English from the
very beginning up to the King James Bible of l6ll.
All in perfect condition. And my grandfather sold
this library to pay for his election expenses, about
1850. What would it bring today? Gosh I
Teiser: Did it go as a whole?
Magee: No, no. He sold it piecemeal at auction. In fact
I have a book right here from it, which is rather
fun. That's the bookplate.
Now, on my father's side, I come of a long line
of divines, Irish divines. My great-great grandfather
was archibishop of Dublin, and my grandfather was
archbishop of York. But my grandfather came to
England [from Ireland] to be bishop of Peterborough
in about i860, I think, around there.
Well, thereafter, being born and raised for
about a year in Yorkshire, my father had [got] a
parish in London — it was in St. John's Wood — so I
was brought up really in the northwest of London,
until I was about 18, and then my father died very
suddenly. Being one of eight children, I had to
Magee: leave school because suddenly from being fairly
affluent, there was no money at all. You know, a
parson's family sort of thing.
So I went to work in London, but I just couldn't
let my mother support my three younger sisters and
me too, see. I couldn't live on what I earned. So
I came to America. I had a strange idea of being a
farmer, and this is very odd because I don't know an
apple from a pear in its natural state. So I came
to San Francisco.
Teiser: How did you happen to chose San Francisco?
Magee: Because I didn't like New York and I didn't like
Chicago.
Teiser: You went there and didn't like them?
Magee: Yes, but I didn't stay very long. But my aunt was a
great friend of the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to
France. And her son was John Stern of the Lev! Straus
family in San Francisco. Do you know the Sterns, Mrs.
Sigmund Stern? And, so she said to my aunt, why not
have David go to San Francisco and my son will look
after him? You know, when you're nineteen, nothing
matters. You can't fail. Well, I was making no
money when I arrived. Of course, I realized I way
no farmer at all. I didn't even try.
So I got a Job as a bookseller with John Howell,
Magee: and I worked for Howell for two and a half years,
and in 1928 — it was 1925 when I came over — in 1928 I
opened up a shop of my own.
Teiser: You had clearly had an interest in books but what
did you present to Howell as your qualifications?
Magee; I had none at all. I Just had an English public
school education.
Teiser: Where did you go to school?
Magee: I went to Lancing College. It's in Sussex.
Well, of course, I've always been a book
collector. When I was eight years old I began to
collect books. It was a rather weird sort of
collection. I had pocket money of six pence a week,
and I went about all the churches in London, and I
bought religious pamphlets. They sold them in boxes
in the porch, you know for a penny. I hadn't any
idea of what these books were about. They had titles
like, "What Is Transubstantiation?" and that sort of
thing. But they were done in a series. They were
like collecting stamps or cigarette cards; they were
numbered. And I went all over trying to get
complete sets of these things. I think my mother
threw them away one time years later. I honestly
had, oh, a couple of hundred. That was my first
essay into book collecting.
Teiser: What was John Howell like when you first knew him?
He was in about his prime then, wasn't he?
Magee: Yes, I suppose John Howell was. I hate to think he
was younger than I am now. But I thought he was a
very old man, I being twenty. But I was very
interested in Bacon, and I think that's why I got
the job, because he was an expert in this Bacon-
Shakespeare controversy, which I couldn't see, but
still.... He asked me who my favorite authors were,
and I mentioned Bacon, and that apparently did the
trick.
So I went to work for him for $75 a month,
which wasn't bad in those days. I couldn't live on
it, but I did. The first job I did for Howell was
to compile an Elizabethan catalogue. How I did this
I will never know, with the little knowledge I had.
I had only been working there six months when I
started this catalogue. I'm not patting myself on
the back or anything, but it is Just the fact that
when you're young, you know, you Just do these things.
I wouldn't dare do it now. I wouldn't have the
courage. [Laughter]
So I opened up a shop on Post Street, ^-80 Post
Street, which was part of the Children's Bookshop.
Do you remember the Children's Bookshop? A Miss Moore
Magee: and a Mrs. Powell, I think. They ran it, and they
had a long narrow room like a shooting gallery at
the side. I rented this and stayed there for six
or seven years.
Teiser: What led you to believe that you could make a
living as an independent bookseller? [Laughter]
Magee: When you're that age you don't know the word "fail."
Teiser: And it wasn't the Depression yet, was it?
Magee: No. It was 1928, and things were good. I had a
little capital that I borrowed from two friends and
I went to England with $1,500, and I bought books,
came back, and they sold, much to my astonishment.
Teiser: You were in, I suppose, by then, a good position to
know how to buy.
Magee: Yes. I had had two and a half years experience at
Howell ' s .
Teiser: I mean too in England, having lived there, you knew
your way around.
Magee: Yes, that's true, and I knew some of the bookshops.
When I was fifteen I used to haunt Charing Cross
Road and buy cheap books, you know, for sixpence and
a shilling, that sort of thing. Just to read.
.7
First Publications
Magee: So I came back, and then by 1935 I published my
first book, which was— no, no. What am I talking
about. In 1929 I published my first book.
Teiser: What was it?
Magee: I didn't write it, I published it. This was an
edition of King Lear, with illustrations by my
brother-in-law, whose name is Yunge-Bateman? I
thought they were Just great. And I got Chesterton
to write an introduction to it, G.K. Chesterton.
He was a great friend of my family's, and when I
was young we used to go to Beaconsf ield, where he
lived, and play with his nephews and nieces, the
Oldershaws; I remember them very well. For some
strange reason I insisted that this book — this
edition of Lear — be printed on handmade paper. It
cost me the earth. It cost $9 a copy, I remember.
I could have it on ordinary paper for $2 a copy.
But oh, no, I had to have the best.
Teiser: Who printed it?
Magee: It was printed by the Curwen Press in London. I
took it to Ed Grabhorn first. It was the first time
I had ever met Ed. And for some reason or other he
*Jack Yunge-Bateman.
8
Magee: didn't want to do it. I don't know why. I think
he thought I didn't have enough money to pay for it,
which might well have been true. But I did actually.
[Laughter] That was the first time I met Ed. He
was then in the Bay Coyle Building — what do they
call it now — where the University Extension used to
be on Powell Street, Just above Sutter.
And so my meeting with Ed was not very fruitful,
and so the Curwen Press, which was run by a man
called Oliver Simon, who Just died about a year ago
as a matter of fact [printed the book]. He was a
wonderful typographer. And the book was very
handsome, but it didn't sell because the Depression
came along about then. It was a $15 book — I had to
charge #15 for it. And now it's worth about $75 •
You can't find a copy.
Teiser: Do you have a copy?
Magee: I have my own copy at home, yes.
Teiser: tfas it a big book? Was it a large format?
Magee: Yes. Large quarto, bound in buckram with twelve
illustrations, which were rather Blakean. I always
remember Chesterton saying to me, "Do you want me to
write about the very ordinary play or the extraordinary
illustrations?" [Laughter] I said, "You write about
anything you like." He was a wonderful man, G.K.
Magee: The next time I saw the Grabhorns was after a
trip to England where I bought a very poor copy, a
very incomplete copy, of the book called The S'hir> of
Fools. This is a very famous book of the sixteenth
century and a very rare one. This was the first
English edition, printed by England's third printer,
Pynson, in 1509 » and it has lovely woodcuts. I made
a little "leaf book, and Grabhorn printed it.* And
who did I get to write the introduction? — James D.
Hart. This was his first book. That was in 1935 or
1936. It was a great success.
Teiser: By then had you got to know the Grabhorns?
Magee: Not very well, no.
Teiser: What did Ed look like when you first saw him?
Magee: Oh, Ed was sort of, you know, untidy hair and he
always had a pipe, one of these meerschaum pipes.
And he was cheerful. They all were. I can't
remember the pressman — I guess it was Tom Hewitt.
You know about Tom Hewitt, don't you?
Teiser: Some, not a lot.
Magee: Tom Hewitt, like most itinerant printers, would
suddenly decide that everything was too much and
he'd go on a magnificent bender, and would be gone
sometimes, oh, six weeks. I think I've written him
up, you know, in that little thing I wrote about the
*3rant, Sebastian. An Original Leaf from the First
Edition of Alexander Barclay's Translation of ...
Ship of Fools. San Francisco: David Magee, 1938.
10
Magee: Grabhorn Press, "Two Gentlemen From Indiana." I
think I gave you a copy.*
Teiser: That was the piece of chalk story?
Magee: Yes. [Laughter]
Teiser: tfe got Ed Grabhorn to tell it on tape.
Magee: You did? Oh, good.
Teiser: I think he told your version of it.**
Magee: [Laughter] I've heard it was not Ed who said this
but Douglas Watson, the historian. Tom Hewitt had
a loathing, you know, of all historians. He said
that anyone with a good memory could be an historian
but it took genius to clean a press. [Laughter]
The First Grabhorn Bibliography
But then, to back track a little bit, talking
about the Grabhorns. In 1933 I think — I may be
wrong about the date — Valenti Angelo decided to go
to New York and leave the Grabhorns, and he wanted
to sell his library. The best offer he could get
for this library, which was a marvelous one, was
$4-00. I was a great friend of Ellie Heller's*** and
*It first appeared in the California Librarian, and
was reprinted in the Catalogue of Some Five Hundred
Examples of the Printing of Edwin and Robert Grabhorn,
19T7-1960, issued by the Book Shop of David Magee In
1961.
**See Grabhorn, Edwin. Recollections of the Grabhorn
Press, a 1968 interview in this series.
***Mrs. Edward Heller (Elinor Raas Heller).
11
Magee: she had the beginnings of a very nice Grabhorn
oollection, which she had acquired sort of bit by
bit from either me or Albert Bender. And I said,
"Look, Valenti Angelo wants to sell his library.
He's got all the Grabhorns, all the early ones you
don't have. Do you want to buy them?" And she
said yes. "Well," I said, "let's offer him $800."
Which we did, and Val has always been very grateful
to us because that got him to New York and he could
live for about three months ,. while he looked for a
job, on $800. There were lots of other books besides
the Grabhorns. Boy, I wish I had that collection
now. All these early Indianapolis things, you see,
which he had collected. 'They are very, very rare
indeed.
So then having got this nucleus, Ellie Heller
and I decided that since few people knew anything
about these Grabhorn books we ought to do a
bibliography. And so for three years we labored.
The Grabhorns, of course, never keep anything, and
their memory is appalling. You'd ask them about
something and they'd say, "Oh, we didn't print it."
I'd say, "Well, here it is, right on the colophon,
Grabhorn." "Oh well, perhaps we did." Then we'd
finally dredge it out, you know. And so that was
12
Magee: the birth of the first volume of the bibliography.*
Teiser: It seems to me that Bob said the first one was fun
particularly because they still remembered — this
contraverts what you say to some extent — they still
remembered a good deal about some of the things.
And yet this doesn't contravert it...
Magee: But it's true. But there were lots of things they
didn't want to remember. I think that was the point.
They just didn't like some of the things they had
done. They just refused to remember them.
Teiser: Are there any imperfections in it?
Magee: In the bibliography? Yes, but there's no error of
omission that I have found yet, except for one
broadside. No one has ever turned up anything that
isn't recorded in it. But there were a couple of
errors of commission. We couldn't date one thing.
Later we found we had dated it one year too late.
And there was one ludicrous error. It was a
broadside, which is about nine inches tall and
about five inches wide, and by mistake it was
written nine feet tall, [laughter] which would make
it rather ludicrous. It would look like a piece of
toilet paper. So that was an error. I can't think
of any others, although I'm sure there are some.
It was an awful Job reading proof on that thing.
*Heller, Elinor and Magee, David. Bibliography of^the
Grabhorn Press, 1915-19^-0. San Francisco: [David
Magee],
13
Magee: You know that Franciscan type, which they had got
from Goudy, and had exclusive use of, is not an
easy type to read. And many people complained to
me, why did they use that type? Because it wasn't
easy to read. And I said, "Well, I'll tell you,
you don't sit down and read a bibliography from
cover to cover. You refer to it. And surely for
five minutes you can endure it." And it's a very
handsome type, I think. Very handsome indeed.
Teiser: And it was appropriate since it was theirs.
Magee: Well, of course. Absolutely. Goudy wrote a very
nice introduction to it. In fear and trembling — I
was still pretty young — I went to see him, and Ed
gave me a letter saying, "Dear Fred: Be kind to
David Magee. Let him down lightly," or something.
"Ever yours, Ed." I didn't present this letter of
introduction. I Just kept it. It is one of my
rarest possessions. Ed Grabhom letters in his own
hand, you know, are frightfully rare. He hardly
ever wrote a letter, you know, in his own handwriting.
He used to dictate to Jane most of the time. And
so you don't often find letters entirely in his
holograph.
But Goudy was very nice to me indeed. The
book was published at $35, which was, I suppose,
Magee: quite a bit of money in those days. But it was a.
frightfully expensive book to produce. Itfs handset,
naturally, and all those illustrations and original
leaves we tipped in made it a costly production.
Do you know it took us four years to sell out?
Remember this was published in 19^-0 and the war
didn't nelp.
Teiser: What size was the edition?
Magee: The edition was only 200 copies or 225. Two hundred
I think. I should know. And then, you see, the war
came along and nobody had $35 or nobody cared. I
know I had about six or eight copies for years, but
finally it sold out. Now it sells for about $300,
$250 to $300.
Teiser: And going up daily, t>robably.
Magee: I expect so. I find it very hard to get indeed
these days. Of course, I have my own copy.
Teiser: Where did you find the books? You had the Heller
collection to begin with.
Magee: That to begin with. And Edwin once in a great while
would turn up something that he had in the basement.
But we also went to see Francis Farquhar's
collection. Who else did we use? Val was awfully
complete, you know. And then George Harding had
some stuff. George Harding had been in touch with
15
Magee: the Grabhorns during the Indianapolis days, and he
had some letters, back and forth. He had collected
various promotional things that Ed had printed. Ed
printed nothing of any importance in Indianapolis.
Nothing. They were all advertising gimmicks and
promotional leaflets and that sort of thing.
Teiser: And some things that they thought were funny.
Magee: Well, they did two awful books of poems. One,
The Laugh of Christ and Other Original Linnets.
Probably Ed told you all about this, didr.'t he?
Teiser: He told something about it, but...
Magee: He [the author, St. Claire Jones] was apparently the
secretary of the governor of Indiana or the mayor
of Indianapolis or something, and he thought he was
a great poet. He published two books. I can't
think of the name of the other one. I should know.
They're frightfully difficult to get. There were
just 100 copies printed.
Teiser: Had you heard of the Grabhorns before you came to
San Francisco?
Magee: No. No. You see, they had only been here five
years when I arrived. Of course I did get to know
them pretty well after a while through Albert
Bend.er, who was always a very good customer of mine,
from the very beginning.
16
Albert Bender
Teiser: Can you evaluate his position in this whole develop
ment of interest in...
Magee: Albert Bender?
Teiser: Yes.
Magee: Yes, I think I can in a way. He was a great patron
and he helped all sorts of people in every kind of
art. I mean, painters, sculptors — artists of all
kinds. Every Saturday of his life he came into my
shop, and every Saturday he sat on the sofa and
every Saturday he went to sleep. He'd sleep through
all sorts of people, but if anybody of any importance
came in, he woke up. It was the most extraordinary
thing. [Laughter] He dearly loved a celebrity.
He was a sweet man, though.
He had a passion for big books, you know. He
was a very small man himself; I don't suppose he
was much more than five feet. I remember he always
bought large folios, which were a drug on the
market, you know, but he always bought them and gave
them to Mills. Mills must have an Immense collection
of books about Greek coins and Roman ruins and other
such things bound in full leather. They used to cost
17
Magee: next to nothing, you know — "about $5« Albert always
bought them. He'd never buy a book from the shelf.
If I wanted to sell him a book, I had to put it on
the floor. Always. Even though it had Just come
in. Even if it hadn't Just come in, he still
wouldn't buy it if it was on the shelves. There's
a certain psychology about this, you know. One time
I was going to get rid of a lot of books that t Just
didn't want. I was going to give them to the Goodwill
or Salvation Army. I put them all in a corner, and,
you know, everybody who came in made a beeline for
this corner and I sold about half of them. They
never would have sold on the shelves — never. So,
as you see, there are sometimes books on the floor
here. [Laughter]
Teiser: I gather that Bender thought he went looking for
bargains a good deal.
Magee: Well, I think he did to a certain extent. He was
very generous though, and he bought an immense
number of books from me. And he, of course,
encouraged the Grabhorns. He was one of their
earliest patrons. As he was to the Windsor Press.
Teiser: James Johnson told me he didn't -want to give an
interview about the Windsor Press, that it was long
past. And so what we have on the Windsor Press we
18
I
reiser: have had to get from others. So any recollections
that you have would be helpful.
Magee: I knew Cecil better than I knew Jim. I haven't
seen him in ages. They went out of the field of
fine printing years ago. When they ran the Windsor
Press, they printed very nicely. They were rather
imitative, I think, especially of Bruce Rogers.
But Albert would give them books to print for
the Book Club of California. He was always having
things printed by one or another printer — Lead
Kindly Light was one of his favorites, you know,
and the Sermon on the Mount, and such old chestnuts.
But he'd give them around to his friends. He'd
have 100 copies printed and present them to his
friends.
Telser: As broadsides?
Magee: Broadsides. It was mainly broadsides. A great
many. If you look in the index of the Grabhorn
bibliography, you'll see an awful lot of numbers
after Albert M. Bender.
Teiser: V/as he the main influence in the early Book Club?
Magee: Yes, he was, certainly. He was the treasurer I
think or secretary for many, many years. Something
like forty years. You see, the Boo* Club started
in 1912 and they published their first book in
19
Magee: Edward Robeson Taylor was the first president of the
Book Club, and W.R.K. Young was the vice president.
Albert Bender was the secretary, I think, or
treasurer. I wrote all this up in my history of
the Book Club, so you'll forgive me if I forget.
Teiser: That book was written for what occasion?
Magee: The [nublication of the] hundredth book. The
Hundredth Book was the bibliography which I
compiled.*
I became a member of the Book Club, I think, in
1935, around there. I have been a great devotee of
it ever since.
The Second Grabhorn Bibliography and Other
Publications
Teiser: To get back to the Grabhoms, which I have led you
away from — you've described something of the first
bibliography. Let's continue onto the second one.
Magee: Well, the time came when the second one should be
done, and this was in 1955 or 1956. Sixteen years
had gone by and the Grabhoms had printed an
immense number of books. So I approached Ellie
Heller but she was so busy — you know, she was
*Magee, David. The Hundredth Book. A Bibliography of
the Publications of The Book Club of California & a
History of the Club. San Francisco: The Book Club
of California, 1958.
20
Magee: California committee chairman or something of the
Democratic Party and she was in Washington half the
time. It just was too much for her and so she
couldn't. And so my wife helped me; we did it
together. The basis of this one was Florence
Walter's* collection, to whom the book is dedicated.**
(And incidentally the first volume is dedicated to
Albert Bender.) She was wonderful — we had the run
of her drawing room, her books, and with all the
paraphernalia we used, you know, we made an awful
mess. We used to go up there about twice a week in
the morning and Just work at it.
If there are any errors in that, I really don't
know. I think there probably are. I'm sure there
must be.
Teiser: If you don't know them it might be assumed that
there aren't.
Magee: I haven't had them pointed out. Usually people love
to point them out to you, [laughter] that being
human nature.
Teiser: How long did it take you?
Magee: Well, that one, I should imagine, took us two years.
About two years.
*Mrs. John I. Walter.
**Magee, Dorothy and. David. Bibliography of the Grabhorn
Press, 19^-0-1956. San Francisco: [David Ma^ee] , 1957.
21
Teiser: Did the Grabhorns work with you on the editorial
part of that one as much as on the earlier one?
Magee: Yes, they helped as much, but you know they always
start out rather unenthusiastically and then they
end up very enthusiastic. They couldn't care
anything about it at all in the beginning. They
couldn't be bothered. I remember there was a book
wi/rfcten by a man called Cressler. I went in one day
and said, "Can you tell me who this man is and where
he's from?" Both Bob and Ed. categorically denied
ever printing the book. So there again I showed them
the colophon and there was the printer's mark and
their name. So, oh yes, they did. They remembered
something. Ed came up and he said, "All I can
remember is he never paid us," [laughter] which is a
cry I've heard many a time from Ed. And Bill Grover
said, "Now I think he came from Indianapolis." And
Ed said, "No, no, no, no. It was Detroit." This
is the way we had to drag the stuff out of them, and
finally we got it right and we wrote to Mrs. Cressler
(Mr. Cressler had died) and found all the information
we needed — why it was printed and how many, etcetera.
Teiser: Ed Grabhorn in his interview spoke a bit as if
nobody ever paid him enough. And I gather, although
he was not at all well at the time of his interview —
22
Teiser: I gather this had been fairly characteristic of him
all along, to exaggerate.
Magee: Oh, always exaggerating. Never got a penny. The
Book Club of California was the worst offender.
[Laughter]
Well, actually one time the Book Club did only
pay the printers as the books were sold, because
they just didn't have the money. It worked a
hardship on printers, who had to pay for their paper
and ink, their help and that sort of thing. It
wasn't easy.
Teiser: You were the publisher of both of the bibliographies
yourself?
Magee: Yes. That's right.
Teiser: What other notable books have you published?
Magee: Well, I got a whole series of "leaf" books mainly
dealing with illuminated manuscripts. I have done
I think five in all, four or five. They all had
introductions by Dr. Schulz of the Huntington Library,*
who is the head of the manuscript department there.
They are very handsome books, and they're frightfully
difficult to get now.
Teiser: Over what period were they published?
Magee: I can't remember the date of the first one. I can
look it up in the bibliography. I think it was just
*Dr. H.C. Schulz.
23
Magee: before the war. About 1938-39» and then I did one,
oh, quite recently, about seven or eight years ago.
Teiser: Over that span?
Magee: That span, yes. And they were all quite different,
you see.
reiser: Who printed them?
Magee: They were all printed by the Grabhorns.
Teiser: In what sizes?
Magee: They varied. They varied according to the size of
the original leaf of the manuscript, you see. One
was quite tall — one was huge.
Teiser: I meant what size editions?
Magee: Oh, none were more than 200. Most of them were 100,
75, or 125 — something like that.
Teiser: Most of the books that you have published you have
sold how, by direct orders?
Magee: Yes, that's right.
Teiser: Not through bookstores?
Magee: Oh, yes. I've sold to bookstores. Yes. I sell to
dealers. They weren't published for very much
money. I published the first one, I think, for $10
or $15. Of course that was more money than it is
today, as you know.
Teiser: What do they sell for now?
Magee: Well, I know one that I would give $300 for if I
Magee: could find. it. That actually was not an1 illuminated
"leaf" book. That was a book I did on the four
folios of Shakespeare, with the original leaves
from all four folios. That was a very early one
the Grabhorns did. And that's terribly difficult
to get. There were only seventy-five. It had to be
limited to the number of leaves I had of the first
folio, which was the difficult one to get. You ce.n
always get the second and the fourth, and sometimes
you can get the third. Broken copies and so on. I
never break up a perfect book; these were all
imperfect copies.
Teiser: Have most of those found, their way into libraries,
do you think, by now?
Magee: Oh, a great many of them have. As I say, they are
very, very difficult to find indeed.
Bookselling and Book Buying
Teiser: I suppose this is a problem, isn't it, for a book
seller, that gradually so many things get out of
circulation by going into libraries.
Magee: Indeed they do. I like selling books to libraries,
but every time I do I realize I shall never see it
25
Magee: again.
Teiser: Do you like the idea of book auctions?
Magee: Yes and no. I think all sorts of silly things
happen at book auctions. You know, people have
auction fever and they pay much too much for stuff.
But once in a while I've bought some awfully cheap
books. It had been a rainy day or something and
no one was there. People had missed it.
Teiser: Do you go to New York and England to the auctions
pretty much?
Magee: I go to England usually twice a year, and to New
York at least that or sometimes three times.
Teiser: I've been told recently that books are so expensive
in England that it's difficult to...
Magee: They are. They're terribly high. Awfully high.
But, of course I've been very, very lucky. Do you
want me to talk about this or do you want me to
talk about the Grabhorns?
Teiser: I'd like you to talk about this too.
Magee: I have been very fortunate. Of course I've been in
business for over forty years, so a lot of my
customers, who were fairly elderly when I started
as a beardless boy, have died and I've been able to
buy their libraries, which helps very much. I mean,
these young kids going into business now have an
26
Magee: awful time because they don't have any customers.
They don't have any customers who are about to die.
I don't wish to be gloomy or anything. [Laughter]
I always feel a little ghoulish when I look at the
obits. [Laughter]
Teiser: Well, the whole business of buying and selling
books must have changed tremendously since you
first knew it, hasn't it?
Magee: Oh, it has. Enormously.
Teiser: How many very wealthy collectors of the kind — oh,
buyers like Bender and the Clark brothers, are
there now?
Magee: You see, Bender wasn't really a collector. He had
a smallish library, but he bought mainly to give
away to Mills College and that sort of thing.
But the first really great library I bought
was the George D. Lyman library. You knew, he was
the pediatrician here in town and he had a great
collection, and he left instructions in his will
that I was to handle the library. It was an immense
and magnificent library of Californiana. He died
I think in 19^9 or 1950.
But it was much more money than I could posslbly-
do you want me to talk about money?
Teiser: Yes.
27
Magee: I paid in the neighborhood of $35 » 000 for his
library. But I didn't have $35,000 in 1950. But
the Wells Fargo Bank, bless their hearts, lent me
the money. I had a guarantee that the Bancroft
Library would buy $15,000 of it and the California
Historical Society would buy $5,000, so I had
$20,000 I could count on selling right away, which
pleased, the bank. It pleased me, too.
There were over sixteen unique items in that
library. Today I shudder to think what I would
have to pay for the whole collection; $200,000 I
suppose. Well, there was a Zenas Leonard* there ,
you know, which the Bancroft didn't have. So they
had to have it. It was Henry Wagner's copy. Oh,
it was a lovely library!
The next one I bought was the McArthur library,
which was one of the best collections on the
Northwest ever to come on the market. Wonderful
collection. "Tarn" McArthur, he was always known as.
A very old friend and very dear friend, who died.
And then I continued to buy libraries of that
caliber, which was a lifesaver to me really. Buying
individual books is not a very paying concern.
Teiser: What about, on the other hand, the selling? Has
the character of the buyers changed over the years?
*The Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard,
1839.
28
Magee: Well, it's changed in one respect, I think.. I have
many ihore libraries than I used, to have. I used to
rely almost solely on individuals when I was first
in business. And then, of course, I have varied
my stock immensely over the years. I started in
by selling only modern first editions. This is
usual when you're twenty, twenty-one, because this
is what you understand. It was what you've been
reading. But I sort of slowly got out of that into
fine press books and then eventually into early
printed books, fifteenth and sixteenth century
books, which is my love now really.
reiser: Are there many individuals who buy them now?
Magee: Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. I'm very
fond of illuminated manuscripts, but the price has
risen so astronomically now that hardly anyone can
afford them.
Teiser: I'm just trying to think of what great private
libraries there are in these years in San Francisco.
Magee: Well, there aren't very many, you know. I'm selling
much more to [institutional] libraries. I've just
sold a Victorian catalogue which I've been working
on for five years, which is a vast undertaking, to
Brigham Young [University]. Have you seen the
catalogue?
29
Teiser: No.
Magee: I'll show It to you later on. The Grabhorns printed
it, Grabhorn-Hoyem. It took me five years to
collect the material for the catalogue. You tie
up an immense amount of money, because this
collection ran up to six figures. They're very
pleased at Brigham Young to have acquired it. And
I was pleased to sell it as a whole because it saves
an immense amount of trouble, writing to individuals,
writing and saying it's sold, wrapping up hundreds
of small packages, etcetera, you know.
The Grabhorn Press
Teiser: Let's go back to the Grabhorns. One of the things
that we have bits of is the atmosphere of the shop.
People have written about it and people have
discussed it, and we got a bit of it from Bob* a
bit from Ed. But perhaps you can describe it as
you saw it.
Magee: Well, I've seen it over so many years, you know.
Teiser: Well, how it changed, perhaps, if it changed.
Magee: I think perhaps the most interesting thing that one
notices is how dependent Ed was on Bob and Bob on Ed.
*In Grabhorn, Robert. Fine Printing and the Grabhorn
Press, a 1968 interview in this series.
30
Magee: Whether other people have mentioned that or not...
Teiser: Jane [Grabhorn] discussed it quite interestingly,
from her point of view.* I would very much like to
have an outsider's point of view.
Magee: So many times I've been in there when Ed would come
up and say to Bob, "What do you think of this?"
Bob would say, "Well, I don't know. It's not quite
right. Let's try something else." And they would
set up another page and another until they finally
got it right. I don't know whether you know the
book, Landless John. In the second bibliography we
reproduced three experimental title pages for that.
It is most interesting to see the three and how
the final one was obviously far and away the best.
And they did many more, probably ten title pages,
but they just reproduced three trials in the
bibliography.
Teiser: What do you feel each of them contributed to the
enterprise, each of those men?
Magee: Well, of course, it's very difficult really to say.
It was a perfect team. Just perfect. Then, of
course, they always had the pressmen, like Bill
Grover — Sherwood Grover. He would always stick his
oar in too, you know. And, of course, before the
war, in the mid- 'thirties, there were always
*In an addendum to the Robert Grabhorn interview.
31
Magee: apprentices who were coming in and going out — Helen
Gentry and Dorothy Grover.... But many of them
didn't stay very long. But there again, I've
written up all of that in the "Two Gentlemen."
Telser: Did the atmosphere of the shop change over the
years, do you think?
Magee: I wouldn't have thought terribly, no. No, I don't
think so.
Teiser: Bob, in Bob Grabhorn's interview, he spoke I thought
rather wistfully about the fact that he had never
operated a press. Apparently this had always been
rather a disappointment to him.
Magee: Yes. I never saw Bob once at a press. He was always
with a stick in his hand, or locking something up.
That was his job, and Ed was the pressman. Come to
think of it, I hadn't realized, it, I have never seen
Bob, ever, print anything. I didn't realize this
sort of gnawed his soul a little bit. But I imagine
it might.
Of course, if the Grabhorns have one weakness —
Jane won't like me for this — it's their bindings.
Pretty as they are, they are not very substantial
bindings. And I think it's their one great weakness,
or was, perhaps I should say.
Teiser: I think they indicated that it was largely a matter
\
Teiser: of economics.
Magee: Well, of course, they had a first-class binder in
Bill Wheeler. There was a strange character.
[Laughter] He was a weirdy, but he was an awfully
good binder. His binding on the Aesop's Fables was
really a beauty, and on the Maundevile* too. Those
two books. Masterpieces.
Teiser: There was some discussion of Hazel Dreis and the
Leaves of Grass
Magee: Well, Hazel Dreis was about the world's worst
binder. I am told — I don't know how true this is,
I've never been able to find this out — that Hazel
Dreis really didn't bind that book. She started to,
and that Bill Wheeler did it. But I've never known
about the truth of that.
Teiser: I think Ed Grabhorn said she started it and he
finished it.
Magee: I think that's so. There was another good binder
there after Bill sort of departed. I think his
name was Andrews, if I recall. His name is in the
back of the bibliography, the first bibliography,
I think. I'll check that. He wasn't there very
long. He was quite good.
But then, you see, Jane took over and went on.
Not that the bindings are bad, but they're not
*The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile.
33
Magee: substantial. They don't hold up and they curl.
I at one time owned a book bound by Ed. It was the
most appalling thing. [Laughter] I wish I had it
now.
Teiser: Did Bob and Ed's tastes differ?
Magee: Not particularly. They seemed to agree always that
something was wrong with it or something was very
right with it. At least in my hearing. However, I
wasn't up there all the time by any means. I was
up often, in and out, especially when working on
the bibliographies, because we always had to bother
them about some question.
But where Bob is so remarkable is his knowledge
of types. I mean, every typeface, Just by glancing
at it. Awfully good.
Teiser: We don't have on the record really anything about
the schism that brought about the breakup of the
Grabhorn Press.
Magee: Well, I think, to be quite blunt about it, it was
woman trouble. I mean, the two wives couldn't get
along. Jane and Irma. As you probably know, Ed
and Bob were never partners. Bob worked for Ed and
received a salary, and I think that caused a certain
amount of unhappiness on Jane's part, certainly.
Teiser: I suppose that was partly because Ed had access
Teiser: to capital.
Magee: Yes. You see, he married a rich wife. Marjorie
was very well off.* And, I think, in fact I know,
this was what broke it up [the disagreement of the
wives]. It certainly was personal. Of course I
think it's a terrible shame that it ever happened.
Awful shame.
Teiser: Early on, it was called The Press of Edwin and
Robert Grabhorn.
Magee: Well, sometimes it was that and sometimes it was
the Grabhorn Press, sometimes E. and R. Grabhorn.
They varied their colophons tremendously.
Teiser: But that early one would indicate that they were
considered equal in the enterprise to begin with.
Magee: That's right. Well, I always thought they were,
for many years. I had no idea that Bob was Just
[on] salary.
Well, he's found a nice niche now, I think,
where there's not too hard work. I mean, Andy's*
young and can take most of the burden off Bob and
Jane.
Teiser: Do you feel they're doing good work?
*Edwin Grabhorn 's second wife. He married,
following her death, Irma Engel.
*Andrew Hoy em.
35
Magee: Yes, I do. I donft think it's as good as it was.
Teiser: Why not?
Magee: Well, I don't know. I think Bob's tired, and Andy
is inclined to be a little slapdash, Just a little.
Whereas before Bob and Ed would spent hours and
hours on the most trivial thing really. It always
had to come out right.
Teiser: I think Bob feels that Andy sometimes over-
embellishes things, but he doesn't want to stop
him.
Magee: No, that's right. Well, this book that they're
doing now on Alaska is a case in point. I don't
like the title page at all. I told them so. Not
that it makes any difference. [Laughter] I think
it's a cluttered title page; I think it's dreadful.*
Teiser: When you've made any criticisms, has it ever made
a difference?
Magee: No. Never. And that's the way it should be. I've
never, with all the books they've done for me, I've
never said a word. I think all my publications done
by the Grabhorns are perfect books, except for the
last Illuminated manuscript "leaf." Ed insisted
that Mary do an illustration for it, and it was
simply God-awful. Awful! It ruined the book. But
I couldn't say this. You don't go to a man and say,
*It was later changed.
Magee: "Look, your daughter has ruined my book." So I
Just gulped and took it. But I didn't like it one
bit. It was slapdash and crude and just wrong.
But there was nothing I could do about it.
Teiser: Didn't she do some of the work on the Shakespeare
series?
Magee: She did them all. I didn't like them. But that's
purely personal. Some people liked them very much
indeed. But not I.
Incidentally, Ed had his first stroke when
The Tempest was being printed. One eye was off,
and it shows in The Tempest because many copies
were off register.* They had to throw away an awful
lot of them. I remember I came across it by accident,
I had bought ten or fifteen copies of this book. I
was looking through one and suddenly saw that a page
was off register, and I found it in about three
copies out of the fifteen that I bought. And that
was purely because Ed was not seeing right; his
vision was off.
Teiser: I see. I'm glad to have this, because that dates
the beginning of his illness.
Magee: That's right. It does.
Teiser: After that, did Bob take over more in the shop?
Was there any change in the operation?
*It was published in 1951-
37
Magee: I don't think so. They always, you know, got down
to work very early, at 8:30, and they closed
somewhat early. They were very hard workers, both
of them.
Teiser: Do you think of any other aspects of their work?
Magee: Well, I noticed one thing. As they grew older
they were less and less inclined to publish stuff.
They were much more inclined to take commissions
from other publishers, or privately print books.
They didn't want to sell direct. They hated, and
always did hate, the mechanics of publishing — the
wrapping and the billing and that sort of thing.
It bored them to death. Well, it is the most
boring part of it.
Teiser: So that meant that there were fewer and fewer books
generated by them.
Magee: Yes. You see, in the early days they generated a
great many books, like Aesop and the Maundevile
and the Leaves of Grass. Actually the Leaves of
Grass and Maundevile were sold outright to Random
House, to Bennett Cerf ; but they started as projects
of their own. And often when they did get bored,
even in those days, they sold a whole edition to
the Book Club of California. You sometimes see a
book with the colophon reading "printed for E. and
38
Magee: R. Grabhorn," and then they've cancelled it and
sold it to the Book Club and so it had a new
colophon, the Book Club of California. It's
happened in two or three instances.
Teiser: How was their work considered throughout the United
States and in Europe?
Magee: I've quoted poor old George Jones so many times —
he thought they were the best printers in the world.
And I think everybody realizes they were the most
original printers. But they're sloppy printers,
you know. There's nearly always a typo in their
books. I've seldom seen a Grabhorn without one.
And one I found on a title page one day. [Laughter]
Ed was furious. [Laughter] They had printed the
whole thing. They had a B for an F, in "of."
[Laughter]
Teiser: Did. it go through that way?
Magee: They said nobody else would catch it. And nobody
has. [Laughter]
They're not so well known in Europe as, shall
we say, Bruce Rogers is, or was. But certainly when
their books come up for sale in London they fetch
lots of money.
There are a great many collectors of Grabhorn,
but they're mainly in this country. There are some
39
Magee: people who collect Grabhorn complete, or try to.
No one has a complete collection, not even Ellie
Heller. Nor does Florence Walter.
Teiser: You mean complete as to books or complete as to
everything?
Hagee: Everything — books, pamphlets.
Teiser: Neither of them has even complete books?
Magee: No. Neither of them. Nobody has. The best
collection in public hands is in the Huntington
Library.
Teiser: What about USP's collection from William Partmann?
Magee: Oh, no. No. Nothing like complete. Ellie Heller
has the best collection and Florence Walter has the
second best collection. As I say, of the public
libraries, Huntington has the best, and the New York
Public. And Wellesley is very good, too. Wellesley
has a nice collection. Not as good though as New
York Public or Huntington..
Teiser: Are there any large collections in Europe?
Magee: Well, oddly enough, Albert Bender, you know, used
to send books to Trinity College, Dublin. And right
near the Book of Kells you* 11 see a little case of
California printing — Nash, Grabhorn, Taylor & Taylor,
It was there the last time I was there, which was
four or five years ago, and it was put in, oh, long
Magee: before Albert died.
Teiser: We were in Paris briefly last year and talking to a
bookseller, Jammes, who seemed to know all about the
Grabhorns .
Magee: Oh really? Well, a lot of English dealers do too,
you know, and a lot of English libraries. The
British Museum buys most of the Grabhorn books as
they come out. There's a collection now in South
Australia which I started, years ago, and they buy
everything. Oh, this must have started twelve,
fifteen years ago. The public library of South
Australia. They've got a fine collection.
And Brigham Young has a good collection too,
now, since I've been helping them build up their
library.
Teiser: Well, I guess we have covered the Grabhorns fairly
well. Shall we, on another occasion, continue and
perhaps discuss the other printers that you have
known in this area?
Magee: Yes, yes. I know most of them.
Interview, April 9, 1969
Magee: If you've thought of any more questions, maybe I
can answer them.
reiser: You may have spoken of this inferentially.
Although, as we were discussing, Ed Grabhorn always
thought he was paid too little, actually people
who had business dealing with the Grabhorns never
came out angry with them, did they? I mean, they
were really easy.,.
Magee: Very. We never had a cross word. Never. Of course
Ed had a persecution complex really. That's what
it boils down to. Because he was always saying
rather unpleasant things about people. I remember —
did you ever know Jackson Burke? Well, Jack and I
used to play a game, you know. When he went to see
them, he would call me up afterwards and he'd say,
"Well, so-and-so got raked over the coals today.
You were all right, and Warren Howell got badly
raked," and so forth. I'd go up there and he [Ed]
would tell me all of these things about nobody
paying him, and it was a piteous cry and almost a
Magee: continuous one.
Teiser: It is reflected in his interview and I didn't want it
to seem that his character had changed after he
became ill if it hadn't.
Magee: No, he was always that way. I mean, ever since I
had known him, and I'd known him for well over
thirty years.
Teiser: But it was he who always did the business arrangements,
was it, rather than Bob?
Magee: Yes, I think so, but they never really were business
men — ever. They never had any idea of what they were
doing financially. I mean, literally, this was the
great artist in them, I think. They didn't care
about the cost. Of course, as I've written before,
when Douglas Watson went in there, you know, as the
business manager (I didn't mention his name in the
article that I wrote), he drove them up the wall
because he'd say, "No, you can't print that." Ed
would say, "All right, we'll print so-and-so." "No,"
Douglas would say. "It's too long a book; it will be
too expensive." And they'd argue. It didn't last
very long. I don't know how long Watson was there,
but probably not more than six months, if that.
Teiser: But it was Ed who did at least nominally handle
the business end?
Magee: That's right. But you see, they never did any
cost accounting. They never figured out, the way
Andy does, exactly the cost of paper, the cost of
binding, the time, the cost of composition. Ed
would just say, "Oh, it will cost you so much."
And most of the time I don't think they made any
money.
The Fine Printing Tradition in San Francisco
Teiser: Who are the other printers, then, with whom you
have dealt and whom you've known?
Magee: I've dealt with a good many of them — Lawton Kennedy
and, of course, I'm very fond of Al Sperisen. He's
one of my oldest friends, and I always think he has
awfully good ideas. The Black Vine Press, which
was, you know, Al and Harold Seeger, did some awfully
nice work.
Teiser: Do you think it had a significance in the general
flow of fine printing from this area?
Magee: No, I wouldn't think so. After all they were more
or less — they were professional printers, of course,
but they never printed anything very large or
impressive. They did, oh, half a dozen books, I
Magee: suppose, for the Book Club. I remember their
keepsakes. I've always liked their work very much.
Of course, Adrian Wilson I think is a very
able printer. Have you taped him?
Teiser: Yes. I'd like your ideas about him and your
appraisal of his position, his work.
Magee: Well, I think he's important. He doesn't do an
awful lot of printing; he does more designing, you
know. I'm ashamed to say I haven't read his book
which came out about six months ago, on the
designing of books, but I'm told it's very good
indeed. I think he's very able indeed, and that
was a disasterous fire [Adrian Wilson's home and
studio burned February 10, 1968]. I had to do the
appraisal for him afterwards, from memory really.
It was an awful Job.
Teiser: When did you first know Adrian?
Magee: Oh, I suppose when he first started the Interplayers.
I think that book, Printing for Theater, is a
marvelous book. Isn't it funny, I think the price
was §32, and do you know he had a hard time selling
it? And now try to find one, Just try to find one.
Teiser: If you can, how much does it go for?
Magee: Well, I just sold one for $165. That's the first
one I'd had. in two years, three years maybe. It's a
Magee: beautiful book; it's a great book.
Teiser: Did you help him as a young fellow? Did you give
him* . •
Magee: No, I didn't. You see, my publishing, you know,
is very sporadic.
Teiser: I mean Just in the matter of encouragement or
introductions or anything of that sort?
Magee: I can't remember. I've written so much stuff, you
know, about people and things that I've really
forgotten. Someone is threatening to do a
bibliography of me. [Laughter] Well... I haven't
got the stuff. This man who is going to do it has
most of it, so maybe it will occur one day.
Teiser: Oh, that would be good. That would be a source of
an awful lot of...
Magee: Much to my embarrassment.
Teiser: ...source of a large body of information, really.
Magee: Well, it's surprising what you have done and forget
about, you know.
Teiser: You mentioned Lawton Kennedy. Has he ever printed
for you?
Magee: Yes. He did a little book, very nice little book,
on the death of Captain Cook, written by a man
called David Sam}. well. It's the best account of
Cook's death, because Samiwell was there, and it's
Magee: the only really honest account of the death because
the official account was Just whitewashed badly.
The original Samiwell is a very rare book, very
rare indeed.
So Lawton printed that for me, and he did a
very nice Job indeed. Lawton is a good, solid
printer, but I think he has no imagination.
Everything the Grabhorns touch has a little
magic to it, you know. It's extraordinary. They'd
do Just one thing — for example, in The Ship of Fools
1 told you about yesterday, which was Jim Hart's
first book, and they wanted to make it a pretty book
and so they took woodcuts from the volume and. used
them as marginal drawings. And they're Just
enchanting. And the very last one was a man with
a horn, in fact. That was their colophon, the
"grab-horn," which I thought was ingenious.
And, getting back to Lawton, I mean, I do
think he's a very good printer indeed, but all his
books look alike. I can see a row of them right
there. I could see those twenty miles away and
I'd know they were Lawton Kennedy's.
It is curious, isn't it. There are so many
good printers in this town.
Teiser: Why do you think it is?
Magee: Everyone has tried to figure this thing out but
nobody's been able to. Some think it's the
climate. [Laughter]
•reiser: Ed Grabhorn said it was partly the climate that
made him come here because of being able to keep
paper damp.
Magee: Yes. But then it varies so. That works against it
too. I mean, you can get a damp day like this and
tomorrow might be Just a boiler, you know, with no
humidity at all.
Teiser: What are the other theories?
Magee: Well, I don't know. Of course they had a very early
printer here who was a damned good one; that was
Bosqui, Edward Bosqui. And he was the first of the
local printers who really studied the book and how
it should be made.
And then you had, oh hell, what's the name of
the man who followed him? Murdock — that's the man.
But then, of course, Taylor and Taylor and Nash
came along. But they were so imitative, you know.
I mean, they were just imitations of Kelmscott
Press and Doves Press.
Teiser: You don't give Nash, then, much...
Magee: I give Nash tremendous credit for certain things.
His composition was magnificent, but he never printed
Magee: a book, you know. Never, as I'm sure you know.
But, I remember Al Sperisen and I have always
talked about the wonderful rules he made. They're
just marvelous. No one has ever been able to touch
him for that.
I never knew Nash very well, though. He was
a grumpy fellow. When I had anything to do with
him, he was.
Teiser: Did you ever try to do business with him?
Magee: No, never. No, you see, he went up to Oregon when
I was fairly young. You see, I went into business
in 1928 and I think by 1935 he had left San Francisco,
I'm not sure of the date when he left, but it was
before the war.
Teiser: Were you in his printing office?
Magee: Oh, yes. But not often.
Teiser: What was your impression of it?
Magee: Terribly neat. FauntLeRoy, of course, was a neat
little man, and a very able man too. But as I
recall, all Nash's stuff was printed outside, at
some press. Fauntleroy used to just stand there
with the printer, you know, and examine the sheets
as they came off the press.
But his Dante is a great book. The four-vorime
Dante. No doubt about it. But then he could do
Kagee: those frightful broadsides for Mrs. Doheny. Have
you ever seen them? Oh, they're the most appalling
things. They're all done in purple and greens
and reds and pinks, and usually religious matters,
as you'd expect. Like the Ten Commandments and
the Lord's Prayer and that sort of thing. And then
he'd turn around and do "When Willie Wet the Bed,"
you know, that tiresome thing of Eugene Field's.
Did you ever see the wonderful picture of Ed
Grabhorn laughing in a chair with a picture of Nash
up right above, a photograph of Nash? I used it as
a frontispiece of my Grabhorn catalogue.
Teiser: Mrs. Farquhar took it, is that the one?
Magee: That's right, yes.
Well, as you know, I've Just written a
memorial [of Edwin Grabhorn] for the Hoxburghe
Club. This is one of five I've done so far. I
hope no more. To make five different ones is not
very easy, you know. And we're using two or three
of fcarjorie Farquhar 's photographs with that.
Teiser: What are the other memorials?
Magee: Well, I've got two for the Book Club. I wrote the
little one that was slipped in, you know, [to the
Quarterly News-Letter] that Bill Grover printed.
And then I did a t>iece culled from all the various
Magee: remarks people made about Ed, which was printed in
the Quarterly in the body of the text. And then
I've done one for the Antiquarian Bookman. Does
that make five? Something like that.
It's very difficult, you know, to write five
different aspects of him. I mean, as a member of
the Roxburghe Club, he hardly ever came to meetings.
In fact I've never seen Ed at a meeting of the
Roxburghe Club in the fifteen years that I've been
a member.
But he was awfully generous about printing
for them. He did a wonderful thing on Japanese
urints which he gave as a keepsake, with three
original prints. That's a nice little rarity too.
There were only fifty done.
Ed was very generous that way, and he was
awfully good to people who came in and, you know,
looked around the press. I think he loved to waste
time. I always remember one time going in there.
It was about four days before Christmas and Ed had
about two dozen Christmas cards to finish up for
people, and here he was sweeping the shop out.
[Laughter] He couldn't be bothered to get to the
press.
Teiser: Back to the general tradition of printing here and
51
Teiser: why there have been so many good printers. Do you
think they kind of kept generating each other, as
you were implying?
Magee: I think they did.
Teiser: Were they drawing each other here?
Magee: Now, whether Ed came because he knew the reputation
of Nash — but Nash didn't have much reputation then,
you know. His reputation really came in the 'twenties,
because when he was at the Tomoye Press, which was
Paul Elder's press, you know, he called himself Jack
Nash. And then he got kind of high and fancy — he
called himself John Henry Nash and put all his Litt.
D.'s after it. He was a great showman. I mean,
you've seen those Christmas books he did for Clark
in Los Angeles, haven't you? They're most elaborate.
But you know, I'm told — I don't know this for
absolute fact — I'm told he charged $50,000, which
makes it work out at about $200 a copy. These were
given away. But he died broke. Honestly broke.
But I don't think Ed Grabhorn was influenced
by anybody, except at the very beginning I think he
was much influenced by Bruce Rogers. This I'm sure
of. But he cut away from it very rapidly.
Teiser: What other printers have contributed, in your view,
to this tradition? Maybe I'm trying to make 11; more
.52
Teiser: of a unified thing than it is.
Magee: Well, of course, there were the Windsor boys, but
they didn't last very long. They were very
imitative too, I thought, particularly of Bruce
Rogers. They never got away from it. All their
books are alike, in my opinion. There was a book
they did that I'm very fond of, on tobacco, for the
Book Club. It's a real beauty. I'm very fond of
that.
I think the Book Club has been a great benefit
to many printers around here. It's been far and
away the most active Book Club in the country, you
know.
Teiser: Are there any others like It in the world, really?
Magee: Well, the Grolier Club in New York is somewhat
similar. The Grolier Club is much more social.
I've been a member of it for some years. It hasn't
benefited me very much, though. I never remember to
go there when I'm in New York. [Laughter]
Teiser: Well, the Book Club you have been very active in,
haven't you?
Magee: Oh, yes.
Teiser: How long were you editor of the Quarterly?
Magee: Oh, God! It seems forever. I still am. I can't
get rid of it. I've been editor for it seems like
53
Magee: a century. Trouble is every president who comes in,
he's always a friend of mine, and he always says,
"You will carry on the Quarterly won't you?" I say,
"Oh, could I please be relieved?" "No." So I go
on, and it stumbles from issue to issue and somehow
gets out.
The Post-Grabhorn Printers
Teiser: As editor of that, then, you deal with some of the
so-called younger printers now?
Magee: Yes. Well, I don't do very much of the technical
end of it. I leave that to Dorothy Whitnah. Arlen
Philpott, you know, is the printer of the Quarterly
now. The Grabhorns printed it for many, many, many
years. And then Taylor and Taylor did it for a
year or so, but now we gave it to Arlen.
Teiser: Do you think he's doing a good job?
Magee: Very nice indeed. I think it's very attractive.
Teiser: He's one of the people who's been mentioned as one
of the future hopes for the fine printing profession.
Magee: Yes. Well, of course, he got his training at the
Grabhorns', you know. I don't think he ever will
really break into the sort of big-time printing,
Magee: because he has innumerable children, you know, to
support and I think another wife too. His present
wife is a darling. And I think he's now printing
full time. There was a time when he was sort of
moonlighting, printing on the side.
Teiser: Is he doing anything else of significance besides
the Quarterly?
Magee: Only my stationery. [Laughter] He does my stationery
for me. I've never seen a real book from him. I
think one of these days he may do one. He gets
help, you know, from Mallette Dean.
Teiser: Yes. Mallette Dean himself has been part of the
fine printing scene.
Magee: Yes, he has.
Teiser: He's hard to place in it, however.
Magee: He is difficult. That Physiologus he did for the
Book Club is a beautiful book, a lovely book. As a
matter of fact,, you know, you asked me about Adrian
Wilson. The first book that the Roxburgh e Club
published under what we call the Albert M. Bender
Memorial Fund, as the publishing venture is called,
was printed by Adrian Wilson. Its title is Bully
Waterman, by Richard H. Dillon. I was more or less
responsible for this publication — Dick's first.
What reminded me of it was the second one was done
55
Magee: by Mallette Dean, German Travellers in California,.
A nice little book. Of course, he helps Lew and.
Dorothy Allen out, you know. And, of course, Lew
and Dorothy, you know, are perhaps the only
commercial printers — and they are commercial
printers and they sell their stuff — working from a
handpress. And I think they're Just great.
Teiser: You've seen their books on the market over the
years. How have they gone?
Magee: Oh, tremendously. Tremendously. I always used to
say that one great fault in their books was they
have a somewhat pastel quality. And to prove me
wrong — I think they must have overheard this — they
published Conrad's — oh, which one was it? [Aside:
What was that Conrad book that they...? Mrs. Magee:
Youth. Magee: Was it Youth? Mrs. Magee: I think
so.] Youth, with illustrations by Hughes-Stanton,
which had the most staggering bright colors you ever
saw in your life. You started every time you looked
at the page.
I think that Dorothy usually does the coloring.
She always tends toward pastel shades.
Teiser: I have heard that, they tend to use too many colors,
perhaps.
Magee: Well, I think it probably is quite a valid criticism.
56
Magee: But their presswork is awfully good. Very good.
Teiser: How have their books appreciated in value?
Magee: You see, they're so limited. Very seldom do they
do more than 1^0 copies of anything, except when
they do something for the Book Club and then of course
they have to do more. But with only 1^0, you know —
of course, their books are expensive. They're
usually published at around $60-$65.
Teiser: Doesn't a large proportion of each edition go into
libraries?
Magee: An awful lot does, yes. I've been trying to complete
an Allen collection for Yale, and I've still got
one book to go. I can't find it.
Teiser: Which one is that?
Magee: Oh, it's an awfully unimportant book. It isn't a
book at all, really. It was an elaborate Christmas
card; it was Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. And
it's six pages, I think, or four pages. But I can't
find it. I thought I had one of my own, as I'm
sure he sent me one, but it's gone.
His first book is frightfully difficult. It's
a book of poems of his father's. I've only seen
but one copy of it. It's a terribly rare book.
Teiser: Is it good?
Magee: No. The poems? The poems are frightening.
57
Teiser: But could you tell from the printing what kind of
work he was going to be doing by now?
Magee: Well, it's so long ago since I had this one copy —
it must have been five or six years ago — that I
really don't remember. It didn't have any great
"oomph" to it. The second book they did was The
First Calif orniac, which is a nice pleasant little
book.
Teiser: But their work has grown?
Magee: Oh, grown tremendously. Unfortunately they have
been much influenced by the French. They insist on
doing this French style of book which I can't bear.
Their Polyglot Bibles, for example, is just a bunch
of confetti to me. The leaves all fall out. I
don't like it at all.
But we've always had a policy at the Book Club,
you know, that the printer is never dictated to as
to how he should print a book. But in this instance,
there was a committee formed, which I was on, to
have him explain to us why this book had to be done
this way. And he did, and I was still agin it. I
think Oscar was the only other person who was agin
it too, but he insisted that the printer should
have absolutely clear say in it and. not be interfered
with in any way, by the board of directors or anybody
*The Great Polyglot Bibles.
Magee: else. Which makes sense. You trust a printer to
print a book, and let him go ahead and do it.
Teiser: That has been one of the beneficial factors in the
club's influence,, has it not?
Magee: That's right. And, of course, as you know, we
spread our favors at the Book Club. I mean, every
nrinter gets a chance, if he's able to do the work.
Teiser: Stauffacher has printed a few things, hasn't he, for
the Book Club?
Magee: Yes. He did that wonderful book on "Catnachery."
I'm very fond of it.
Teiser: Where would you place him in this whole scheme?
Magee: I think his work is very good. Jack's a funny boy.
I don't know him terribly well; I mean, I've known
him for years but... I tried to help him out a little
bit when he was first trying to publish books. He
published a book on bicycle polo. Did you ever
see it? It's the only book on the subject. It's
played in India, you know, and refers to nolo on a
bicycle. I've always tried to sell the books of
these young printers, you know to encourage them.
Another one is Don Kelley, of the Feathered
Serpent Press. He's been printing the poems, you
know, of Professor Richardson* over in Berkeley.
Why, I believe Richardson is still alive and I think
*Leon J. Richardson.
59
Magee: he's in his late nineties. You know, the first
book that Don printed, I think, was Old Cronies,
which was a book of poems by Professor Richardson.
It's a nice little book. He prints occasionally
an announcement for the Roxburgh e Club. Of course,
he's got a full-time Job. He used to be at the
Academy of Sciences, but now he's doing something
else, isn't he? I have the sort of strange feeling
that it's something to do with the Sierra Club, but
I may be wrong.
Teiser: Is Jack Stauffacher continuing to work and print
books?
Magee: Yes, he is. I don't think he's got a press. He
may have; I may be wrong about that. I think he
Just designs a book and has somebody print it. Has
a commercial printer print it.
Teiser: What about Brother Antoninus?
Magee: Oh, well, of course, I think he's Just great. I'm
very, very fond of him and I think he's a marvelous
printer. That Psalter, you know, never got off the
ground really. H'3 printed about seventy pages of
it — is a wonderful thing. Mrs. Doheny, you know,
bought the sheets and had them bound and gave them
to libraries.
Teiser: Have any ever got on the market?
.60
Magee: Yes, I've sold three of them for immense sums of
money; $750, which is a lot of money. Where are
you going to find one? There were only forty-nine
of them. It's a beautiful piece of printing, Just
lovely. I don't pretend to know much about his
verse. I published a book of them about a year
ago. I did it purely really to help out Ken
Carpenter. Do you remember Ken? He's up at the
University of Nevada now. He printed it, by hand.
Teiser: What was the title?
Magee: It's called The Springing of the Blade. And it was
really a lovely book. I have his first book, A
Privacy of Speech. Of course, he [William Everson,
now Brother Antoninus] printed a lot of stuff, you
know, when he was in the conscientious objector
camps. I never knew a man who had so many names
for presses. The Untied Press, I can't remember
half of them now, but every time he printed a book
he had a new name for his press. It was very
confusing to bibliographers.
Teiser: Do any of those ever come through your hands?
Magee: I have had them, yes. I've had them all, I think,
at one time or another.
Teiser: Do they show any evidences of his future excellence?
Magee: Oh, none whatsoever. They're printed on terrible
61
Magee: paper and very cramped and show absolutely no
feeling for design or anything. But then, of course,
when he printed his first real book, A Privacy of
Speech, with woodcuts by Mary Fabilli, his genius
was immediately apparent. He was — and still is —
such a perfectionist you know, that in this
particular instance the colophon reads one hundred
conies but actually less than sixty got out. The
rest of them he threw away. They didn't come up to
his standards.
Teiser: Amazing man.
Magee: Extraordinary. I hadn't seen him in about three
years until the other day, which is beside the rcoint,
but he must have gained something like sixty pounds.
He used to be frightfully thin. I mean really a
drainpipe. And now he's filled out. Amazing.
These printers come to mind. I had forgotten
all about Don Kelley, for example, as being a printer,
And, of course, there's Roger Levenson, over in
Berkeley. I'm very fond of Roger but he's very
temperamental in character. Every time we want him
to do something he's always full of enthusiasm to
do this thing, and then it all falls apart.
Teiser: Do you admire his printing?
Magee: Yes, in a limited way. Yes, I do. He's learned
62
Magee: everything probably from Lawton Kennedy. He wouldn't
thank me for saying that, but I think it's true.
Haywood Hunt, I think he's still alive, you
know. Have you interviewed him? He's a great old
character. He owns the only piece of printing of
Ed Grabhorn's done in Seattle. It's a little
announcement of the opening of the press, and we
reproduced it in the bibliography. In fact, I
borrowed it from Haywood to do so. I went in about
a year ago to see Lawton about something and popped
in to see Haywood, and I said, "How about this?
Have you still got it?" And he said, "I never had
it. Never had it. I don't know what you're talking
about." And so I showed it to him in the bibliography,
He had the bibliography right there. I said, "This
thing." He said, "Never belonged to me." But I
know it did. Of course, he's getting pretty old.
Teiser: His memory is a little variable now.
Magee: Is he doing any kind of work at all?
Teiser: He's doing some label printing. I think he's about
to retire.
Magee: And, of course, there's Wallace Kibbee.
Teiser: Yes. Have you known him over the years?
Magee: Oh, for many years, yes.
Teiser: Has he ever done any printing for you?
63
Magee: Not for me, no. I don't think he has. No, I don't
think so. No.
Teiser: He has very good taste.
Magee: Yes. That's right. I'm very fond of Wally. But I
haven't seen him recently. You see, he's sort of
semi-retired. He lives over in Marin County, as I
recall.
Teiser: Are there any others who you think of who have been
significant in the past, the recent past?
Magee: I think we've covered most of them.
The Economics of Fine Printing
Teiser: The question I keep bringing up in each of these
interviews is, what next? What kind of fine
printing can continue?
Magee: Well, just so long as we have an inflationary period
it will continue. But the cost of printing is
getting so great. I mean, I'm Just appalled. Just
the commercial printing of regular publishers, you
know. I mean, I remember I published a novel years
ago and it was $2.50. Now it would be about $6 if
it was published today. It's terrible.
Teiser: Of course, the paperback business has cut Into
Teiser: ordinary publishing, I guess, tremendously.
Magee: I suppose it has. Ifm out of the new book
business entirely. I mean, I came out here...
Teiser: And it doesn't seem to have any relationship at
all. I mean, I can see no effect, no crosscurrents
at all with fine printing.
Magee: No. But there was a time, of course — there was one
publisher who always liked to make good books, and
that was Alfred Knopf. He's a great collector of
Grabhorn, by the way. All his books show a sense
of design at least.
Teiser: How many fine printers are printing here now?
Magee: Adrian Wilson, Grabhorn-Hoyem, Lawton Kennedy and
the Aliens. There are about four, I would say,
that are full time and at it all the time. Because
the Aliens bring out two books a year, which isn't
really very many, but when you consider they're
printed by hand and hand illuminated, that's all they
can Droduce.
Teiser: tfell, that's a fairly varied group, now that I
thj.nk of it.
Magee: Yes, it really is. And they're all quite different.
Lawton is the most commercial of them, of course.
Teiser: Although Adrian does a lot of very business-like
designing for Eastern publishers.
65
Magee: Yes, I know he does. There was a time when he was
designing for the University of California Press.
Teiser: I think he still may occasionally.
Magee: Yes, that's right. You saw Jane Wilson's check
list in the Quarterly, didn't you?
Teiser: Yes, I did. Do you think they all will continue as
long as we have inflation?
Magee: Well, I suppose so. I'd hate to see if we had a
depression how many would go to the wall. I worry
a little bit about Grabhorn and Hoyem because
they've got so many mouths to feed down there. I
mean, there's Andy and Jane and Bob and the pressman,
That's a lot of mouths.
Teiser: Yes. They seem to be doing a good deal, though.
Magee: They are. They haven't been very successful with
their publishing ventures, I'm sorry to say.
Teiser: That book of Jane's, I gather, hasn't really gone
like wildfire.
Magee: No, and The Pearl didn't go very well. They asked
my advice about The Pearl. I said, "Well, I don't
think it's going to sell, because nobody gives a
damn about a tenth century poem really. Even in a
modern version." The original's unreadable, sort
of a Beowulf type thing, you know. I'm afraid it
laid a rather serious egg, which is a pity.
•66
Magee: They're doing this book on Alaska. A trip
this artist [Otis Oldfield] made.
Peiser: They're publishing that themselves, are they?
Magee: Yes.
Teiser: The Aliens, of course, seem to me to take them
selves a little out of the category, not because
they (we went into this in their interview) don't
operate under strict economic rules now, but that
they were so well financed to begin with, I think,
that they almost are out of the category.
Magee: Well, they are really because they don't have to
print for a living. They do it and are dedicated
and professional printers. But I know what you
mean. They don't have to keep hours and they don't
have to probably consider costs as much as others.
The Grabhorns had an awful time in 1929, rather
I should say 1930, 1931 or 1932. That's when they
started to print the Americana series, producing
books at a low cost. Before they produced books
that sold for $100, but they then produced a book
which sold for $2.50. And at that the whole thing —
The Americana series — would have collapsed if it
hadn't been for Joseph Henry Jackson giving the
i
Murieta a terrific review, which sold out the whole
series. They had sold only forty copies of the
*Joaquln Kurieta, The Brigand Chief of California,
1932.
67
Magee: Murieta to date, and then Joe reviewed it in the
Chronicle and the Grabhorns sold out the entire
edition. It's extraordinary the hold that man had
on the public. He could sell out an edition.
Joe used to come to my shop — we used to have
lunch together at least once a week or sometimes
twice a week — and he was always in the shop, picking
ur> news about what was going on.
Writing and Editing
Teiser: I was talking with Harriet Parsons, and she suggested
that I remind you to tell a bit about your own
writing. She also said that when she came to you
to apply for the Job as secretary, you asked her if
she often cried. You had apparently had a secretary
who did.
Magee: My first secretary was Lee Orford, who does "The
Gory Road" [San Francisco Chronicle mystery book
review column] , you know, and writes detective
stories. Then, lot's see... I can't remember. I
guess Harriet came to me just during the war, when
I was out of the shop an awful lot. But as for my
writings, I don't know what to say about them, really.
68
Magee: I've published a novel.
Teiser: Have you always been interested in writing?
Magee: Yes. I edited a magazine when I was nine.
Teiser: Devoted to what subject?
Magee: Well, it was devoted to all sorts of things — stamp
collecting, bird's eggs, the kind of things kids
enjoy. It didn't last long. I think there were
only two numbers, if there were that. This was
when I was in my t>rep school, and I was one of the
editors of the thing. It was all in aid of Blue
Cross, which was for horses what Red Cross was — and
is — to neople. This was during World War I. And
one thing I hate is horses, you know. I can't bear
them. I think they have four very dangerous corners
and large teeth and every time I get on one I'm
gone. They know I hate them and they throw me off.
As I told you yesterday, I come from a long line of
huntin' and fishin' and shootin1 squires on my
mother's side, but it's left out of me. I can't
remember much about the magazine really except it
was one of those sorts of mimeographed Jobs that
we sold to our parents for the exorbitant sum of a
shilling or something, in order to support hospitals
for these horses that got wounded in World War I.
[Laughter] My contribution to the magazine was a
69
Magee: poem. I think it must have been a great tragedy;
it made my father laugh.
But for serious writing, I wrote a novel which
Houghton Mifflin published in 19^1 called Jam
Tomorrow. It had a merry little sale. It squeaked
into a second edition. And then, of course, Pearl
Harbor came along and that ruined everything. Well,
for a long time, you know, my friends — the cads —
would telephone me and. say, "I saw a copy of Jam
Tomorrow for forty-nine cents. Can I buy it for
you?" [Laughter] But now I've had the laugh on
them; the other d.ay I saw a copy catalogued by a
Southern California dealer for #10. I was talking
to this man and I said, "I bet you didn't sell that
copy of Jam Tomorrow for $10." He said, "Yes, I
did, and I sold, it to the Huntington Library."
[Laughter]
But I've, oh, I've published a few things. I
published a small article in the Atlantic Monthly
one time, but most of my stuff has been very
ephemeral. I've edited a lot of stuff — introductions.
I've done a couple for the Book Club. I did Ace High,*
which was a dime novel they reprinted.
Teiser: Harriet was mentioning a book that she was very fond
of, about the adventures of a cat. Do you remember it?
*Tripp, C.E. Ace High. The 'Frisco Detective.
San Franc is col Book Club of California, 1948.
70
Magee: Oh, yes. That was my cat in Berkeley, who decided
that he didn't like Berkeley at all. We moved
over there (my daughter was in college) and he
took off. It was called, My Ascent of Grizzly Peak,
and he was gone for about ten days, and we gave him
up for lost, you know. And then one day he Just
showed up at the window and he was very hungry and
his paws were very scratched and he came in and he
punished us for ten days. And he lived to be
almost nineteen. I'm very fond of cats. At one
time we had fourteen. It was all caused, by one
mother who produced two litters a year of four
cats. [Laughter] It never varied. And you run
out of friends after a while, you know. You run
out of friends, at least, who will take a kitten
off your hands.
Teiser: Who printed it?
Magee: Grabhorn. It's frightfully difficult to get now.
Awfully difficult. Because the aelurophiles want
it apparently as well as Grabhorn people.
Teiser: Yes. I suppose they're worse than rail fans,
aren't they?
Magee: Why, I suppose, yes. People are never half-hearted
about cats, you know. You either love them or you
hate them. I'm very fond of them.
71
Teiser: What was the Atlantic Monthly article?
Magee: Oh, that was not an article really, it was sort of
a short story. That was some years ago.
Teiser: Do you write fiction at all any more?
Magee: I'm always starting them and I always drop them.
Jam Tomorrow was fiction. And, I've really
forgotten what I have written. Isn't that awful?
I'd like to have a list for the bibliography this
man is compiling,
Teiser: Do you want to put his name in the record?
Magee: Yes. It's J. E. (Jack) Reynolds, who is a bookseller
in Van Nuys and a very old friend of mine. He
collects Mageeana. There was an amusing episode.
Do you know the Sacramento Book Collectors' Club?
Teiser: Yes.
Magee: Well, do you know Fred Wemmer? Well, apparently,
for some strange reason, Fred Wemmer 's wife collects
me. [Laughter] All the members of the Sacramento
Book Club were asked their collecting interests,
and people wrote "Western Americana," "Alpine," and
"Voyages to the northwest," and various things, and
Fred Wemmer 's wife Just wrote "Magee," which confused
everybody. [Laughter] I was ineffably touched.
Now what have I done else? Of course, I did
the bibliography of the Book Club, you know, and
72
Magee: of course, the two Grabhorns in collaboration.
And, of course, you'd be surprised how many things
I've written for the Quarterly when I had to fill
up space under pseudonyms. [Laughter]
Teiser: Some day someone is going to go through the Book
Club Quarterly and find all the names that don't
exist... .
Magee: That's right.
Teiser: ...because didn't Oscar Lewis do the same thing?
Magee: Yes, he did [laughter] and I followed suit.
Teiser: I tried to get him to remember as many as Dossible
of his pseudonyms. What were yours?
Magee: Pseudonymous Bosch was one. And, oh, I've signed
people's initials. I really can't remember. But
Pseudonymous Bosch was my favorite.
Teiser: [Laughing] Can you spell it?
Magee: It's awfully difficult. Bosch is B-o-s-c-h.
reiser: [Laughter] Yes...
Magee: [Laughter] You know that, I'm sure.
Teiser: But Pseudonymous?
Magee: Pseudonymous — it's impossible to spell. I'm a very
poor speller.
Teiser: I'll look it up. Actually when did you start
editing the Book Club Quarterly?
Magee: I knew you were going to ask me that question, and
73
Magee: I really don't think I could tell you. I would
say — Dorothy, do you know when I started editing
the Quarterly?
Mrs.
Magee: I think about 1? or 18 years ago.
Magee: Is it that long? Oh, it wasn't that long ago, was
it?
Teiser: Did you take over just after Oscar Lewis?
Magee: No, no I didn't. Lew Allen was editor for a while,
and then Donald Biggs took over for I thJ.nk two or
three numbers, and I think I took it over from
Donald Biggs. But it seems to me I've done it
forever. Oh, it's kind of fun.
Teiser: What other things have you edited or written?
Magee: Well, I have been chairman of the Library Committee
at the Bohemian Club and have edited many of the
Library Notes. We get them out sporadically — two or
three a year. I have also written a Grove Play —
196^, I think. It was called The Buccaneers and was
based on Treasure Island. Next year, 1970, the
Club will produce another Grove Play of mine. It's
called The Bonny Cravat and is based — very loosely —
on Alfred Noyes' poem The Highwayman.
Teiser: Anything else for the Bohemian Club?
Magee: Oh, a few Thursday night shows — skits, one-act
Magee: plays — a Thanksgiving show — oh, and a Christmas
play.
Teiser: Which of your writings do you think the best?
Magee: That's a difficult question. I think perhaps a
piece I did for the Book Club Quarterly called
"The Afternoon of a Poet." This was an experience
I had with James Stephens, the Irish poet. It was
reprinted in Second Reading. This was a Book Club
publication, edited by Oscar Lewis.
Teiser: Any others?
Magee: Well, there was an article I did for an anthology
of true crime. My piece was about an Oakland
dentist. It was called "The Death of a Dentist."
The anthology was The Graveside Companion, published
in New York.
All the pieces were originals, written
expressly for the collection. But a funny thing
happened a couple of years after the book was
published. I got a letter from a New York literary
agent saying that they had had an offer from an
English magazine of $4-2.00 for the rights to publish
this "Death of a Dentist." I was curious to find
out what magazine. I think I wrote the agent asking,
but he never answered. I never did find out. I
remember I spoke to some of the other contributors
75
Magee: wondering if they had had similar offers. But they
hadn't. I can only imagine it uras "bought by a
dental magazine. A trade journal sort of thing.
Teiser: To get back to printing in California, have you
ever done any printing yourself.
Magee: Yes, but only as a rank amateur. Many years ago I
suggested to Jackson Burke that he give a class in
printing. He agreed and four of us signed up.
There were myself, Ellie Heller, her sister Aline
Levison* and a man called Burgess. I can't remember
anything about this fellow. I haven't seen him from
that day to this. I think some hobby had been
suggested to him by his psychiatrist. How he found
out about us I can't imagine.
Teiser: Did you actually print anything?
Magee: Yes. We did a broadside. I remember it was Just
after war broke out in Europe and I suggested we
print George the Sixth's speech to the British
people. I wonder if I still have my copy. We each
nulled two conies, I think. Perhaps I gave them
away, though I can't imagine who would want them.
Teiser: Did you enjoy printing?
Magee: Yes and no. I found it very difficult to set type
because I'm left-handed. They don't make sticks
*Mrs. George Levison.
76
Magee: for left-handed people. So I was always the slowest
in the class. But I did enjoy it. The company was
good.
Actually I had done some printing before this —
with Paul Bis singer on a small table press. I
believe he called it The Russian Hill Press. Come
to think of it, I don't know why; he lived then in
Pacific Heights — on Divisadero. Paul learned to
print from Hartley Jackson, then, I think, at the
Stanford Press. Jackson also taught Jim Hart, I
believe. Though I'm not sure of this.
Paul Bissinger's first book was a Lafcadio Hearn
short story. He printed twelve copies. Quite a
rarity these days. I set a little of the type for
this. I then printed by myself a poem of G. K.
Chesterton's — "The Donkey." It's a lovely poem. I
don't remember how many, but it couldn't have been
more than ten copies. I came across a copy the other
day. It's really not bad.
, That's been the extent of my printing adventures
which isn't very much I must confess.
Teiser: Al Sperisen told lie you had done something for the
Grolier Club. What was that?
Magee: Oh, yes. Carroll Harris* wanted to do a keepsake
*Col. Carroll T. Harris of Mackenzie & Harris.
77
Magee: for the members of the Grolier Club when they
visited San Francisco in — I'm guessing now — I960.
1961? He suggested a book about fine Northern
California presses and binderies. I remember he
^^
rang me up and asked me to compile it. I said,
"But, Carroll, they're coming in about two weeks
from now. I can't possibly get it done in time."
"Oh, yes, you can. The Grabhorns are going to drop
everything to print it. The books will be exhibited
at the Legion of Honor for the Grolier dinner out
there . "
Teiser: Who put on the dinner?
Magee: The Book Club of California, I think. Or nerhaps it
was the Roxburghe Club. Yes, it was the Roxburghers
who put it on.
Teiser: And did you get the keepsake finished in time?
Magee: I did but it damn near killed me. I wrote the whole
thing in forty-eight hours. And it's a book — a small
folio of some thirty to forty pages. It's a very
handsome book, incidentally.
*Magee, David. Fine Printing and Bookbinding from
San Francisco and its Environs. San Francisco:
[Privately published] 1961.
78
INDEX
Allen (Lewis and Dorothy), 55-56, 57> 64, 66
Angelo, Valenti, 10, 11, 14
Antiquarian Bookman, 50
Antoninus, Brother, 59 » 69
Bancroft Library, 2?
Bender, Albert, 11, 15, 16-19, 20, 26, *K>
Biggs, Donald, 73
Bissinger, Paul, 76
Black Vine Press, 43
Bohemian Club, 73
Book Club of California, 18, 19, 22, 37, 38, 49, 52, 57, 77
Book Club of California Quarterly, 49, 52-53, 54, 72-74
Bosch, Pseudonymous (Pseud.), 72
Bosaui, Edward, 4?
Brlgham Young University, 28, 29, 40
Burgess, , 75
Burke, Jackson, 41, 75
California Historical Society, 27
Carpenter, Ken, 60
Cerf, Bennett, 37
Chesterton, O.K., 7, 8, 76
Children's Bookshop, 5
Currer, Mary Prances Richardson, 1
Curwen Press, 7, 8
Dean, Mallette, 54, 55
Doheny, Mrs. Estelle, 49, 59
Doves Press, 4-7
Dreis, Hazel, 32
Elder, Paul, see Tomoye Press
fiverson, William, see Antoninus, Brother
Fabilli, Mary, 6l
Farquhar, Francis, 1*J-
Farquhar, Marjorie (Mrs. Francis), 49
FauntLeHoy (Joseph), 48
Feathered Serpent Press, 58
Franciscan Type, 13
79
Gentry, Helen, 31
Goudy, Frederic, 13
Grabhorn bibliography (First), 11-15* 18
Grabhorn bibliography (Second), 19-21
Grabhorn, Bob (Robert), 31, 33, 36, 42
Grabhorn, Ed. [win] , 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 21, 4l, 42, 4?, 50,
51 and passim
Grabhorn-Hoyem Press, 29, 64, 65
Grabhorn, Irma Engel, 33, 34
Grabhorn, Jane, 13, 30, 31, 32, 33, 65
Grabhorn, Marjorie, 34
Grabhorn, Mary, 35
Grabhorn Press, 10, 11, 15, 19, 21, 24, 20, 30, 33, 34,
35, 37, 39, 40, 53, 66, 70, 77 and passim
Grolier Club, 52, 76, 77
Grover, Bill (Sherwood), 21, 30, 49
Grover, Dorothy, 31
Harding, George, 14-15
Harris, Carroll T. , 76, 77
Hart, Jim (James D. ) , 9, 46, ?6
Heber, Richard
Heller, Ellie (Mrs. Edward), 10, 11, 19, 39, 75
Hewitt, Tom, 9, 10
Howell, John, 3-4, 5, 6
Howell, Warren, 4l
Hoy em, Andrew, 34, 35
Hughes-Stanton, (Blair), 55
Hunt, Haywood, 62
Huntington Library, 22, 39
Jackson, Hartley, 76
Jackson, Joseph Henry, 66-67
Johnson, Cecil, 18
Johnson, James, 17, 18
Jones, George, 38
Jones, St. Claire, 15
Kelley, Don, 58-59, 6l
Kelniscott Press, 4?
Kennedy, Lawton, 43, 45, 46, 62, 64
Kibbee, Wallace, 62-63
Knopf, Alfred, 64
Levenson, Roger, 6l
Levison, Aline (Mrs. George), 75
Lewis, Oscar, 57, 72, 73
Lyman, George D. , 26
80
McArthur, "Tarn", 27
Mills College, 16, 26
Moore, Miss , 5
Murdock, , 47
Nash, John Henry, 39, 47, 48, 49, 51
New York Public Library, 39
Oilfield, Otis, 66
Orford, Lee, 6?
Parsons, Harriet, 6?
Partmann, William, 39
Philpott, Arlen, 53. 5^
Powell, Mrs. , 6
Random House, 37
Reynolds, J.E. (Jack), 7
Richardson, Prof. Leon J., 58-59
Rogers, Bruce, 18, 38, 51, 52
Roxburghe Club, 49, 50, 77
Russian Hill Press, 76
Sacramento Book Collectors* Club, 71
Samlwell, David, 45
Schulz, Dr. H.C., 22
Seeger, Harold, 43
Sierra Club, 59
Simon, Oliver, 8
Sotheby's, 2
Sperisen, Albert, 43, 48, 76
Stauffacher, Jack, 58, 59
Stephens, James, 74
Stern, John, 3
Stern, Mrs. Sigmund, 3
Straus, Levi (and family), 3
Taylor, Edward Robeson, 19
Taylor & Taylor, 39, 47, 53
Tomoye Press, 51
Trinity College, Dublin, 39
Type, see Franciscan
University of San Francisco, 39
Untied Press, 60
81
Wagner, Henry, 27
Walter, Florence (Mrs. John I.), 20, 39
Watson, Douglas, 10, 42
Wellesley College Library, 39
Wemmer, Fred, 71
Wheeler, Bill, 32
Wilson, Adrian, 44-45, 54, 64
Wilson, Jane, 65
Wilson, Peter, 2
Windsor Press, 1?, 18, 52
Young, W.fi.K., 19
Yunge-Bateman, Jack, 7
82
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THE INTERVIEW
Ace High, The 'Frisco Detective, 69
Aesop's Fables, 32, 37
Bibliography of the Grabhorn Press. 1915-19^0, 11-15, 18
Bibliography of the Grabhorn Press, 1940-1956, 19-21
Bully Waterman, 5^
Catnachery, 58
First Calif orniac, Th.3, 5?
German Travellers in California, 55
Great Polyglot Bibles. The, 57
Hundredth Book, The, 19
Joaquln Murieta, the Brigand Chief of California , 66-67
King Lear, 7-8
Laugh of Christ and Other Original Linnets, The, 15
Landless John, 30
Leaves of Grass, 32, 37
Magee, David
The Bonny Cravat, 73
The Buccaneers, 73
Jain Tomorrow, 69, 71
My_Ascent of Grizzly Peak, 70
Haundevile, see Voiage and Travaile pf Sir John Maundevile
Pearl, The, 65
rhysiologys, 5^
Printing for Theater. 44-^5
-Privacy of Speech, A, 60 , 6l
Richardson, Leon J., Old Cronies, 57
83
Second Reading, ?**•
Shakespeare folios leaf book, 2^
Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, 56
Ship of Fools, The, 9t 46 "
Springing of the Blade, The, 60
Tempest, The, 36
Victorian catalogue, 28
Voiap:e and. Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, 32, 37
Youth, 55
Ruth Teiser
Grew up in Portland, Oregon; came to the Bay Area
in 1932 and has lived here ever since.
Stanford, B.A., M.A. in English, further graduate
work in Western History.
Newspaper and magazine writer in San Francisco since
1943, writing on local history and economic and
business life of the Bay Area.
Book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle
since 1943.
As correspondent for national and western graphic
arts magazines for more than a decade, came to
know the printing community.
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